As reported on EuroNews
Lawyer Ahmet Kandemir and dozens of other Turkish Bar Association members are trying to preserve evidence from the rubble of last month’s catastrophic earthquake to prove it didn’t need to claim so many lives.
The 7.8-magnitude earthquake and its aftershocks killed more than 46,000 people in Turkey and nearly 6,000 in neighbouring Syria last month.
Turkish police have rounded up 269 suspects as part of a growing investigation into contractors who put up gleaming towers in one of the world’s most active earthquake zones.
But critics worry about President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s close relations with the construction sector and what bearing that might have on his government’s willingness to prosecute negligence.
This puts added pressure on Ahmet Kandemir and the other lawyers who volunteered to deliver justice for families who had thought they were moving into houses able to withstand a big quake.
We are checking the construction material and the thickness of the steel. We take down the street number, record if there were any dead or wounded inside, the damage status, and send all data to the bar association,” Kandemir said.
“We check the debris before it’s lifted, so that the evidence does not disappear,” fellow lawyer Firatcan Kaliz said.
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